


Breaking Point

by Rol



Series: HP Short Stories [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult wizards are neglectful, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bigotry & Prejudice, Bullied Harry, Bullying, Canonical Child Abuse, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Neglectful adults, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Harry Potter, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Trauma, or maybe not?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24996082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rol/pseuds/Rol
Summary: Harry is unfortunately sorted in Slytherin, and isn't impressed with his first glimpse of the Wizarding worldOneshot, First year Harry, Adult wizards are pretty neglectful
Series: HP Short Stories [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794331
Comments: 4
Kudos: 148





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually born as the first chapter of a longer story, but actually fits as a oneshot
> 
> Tried to stay as true as possible to canon-personalities and reactions, though seen through an unhappy Slytherin-Harry perspective

Slytherin. He had just been sorted into Slytherin. Harry looked at Ron, sitting across the Hall, and received a betrayed and angry glare in response. True, he hadn’t known the red haired boy for long, but on the train Harry had felt that they could become friends, if they weren’t already. Ron could have been his very first friend and now he wasn’t even going to look his way without sneering anymore, all because of a stupid hat’s decision. Harry nibbled on his food, hunched down and trying to avoid the stares and whispers in vain: he could hear disparaging comments coming from his housemates as they talked to each other. They were all otherwise ignoring him, and a look at the Professor’s table wasn’t much better. Harry winced: Hagrid was actually crying, sniffling in a huge handkerchief. McGonagall’s lips were set into a thin, stern line and the Headmaster’s smile seemed a bit forced. And somehow, Harry got the distinct impression that it was his fault. His gaze trailed along the table, and he almost chocked on his pumpkin juice: a sallow skinned man with dark, greasy hair was glaring at him with such hatred that Harry wanted to hide under the table. Trembling, Harry immediately ducked his head, and whispered to the boy next to him:

“Who is the dark man with long hair?”

The boy, Nott, Harry remembered, glanced at him fleetingly before turning his back on him and engaging in conversation with the girl on the other side. Harry blinked, feeling unbearably hurt when the boy refused to even acknowledge his existence: no matter how many times it happened, the pain of refusal never decreased. Actually, here that there was no Dudley to ward off the other kids, it hurt even more, because it meant that his peers actually disliked him on his own merits. Breathing deeply, Harry hid his trembling hands beneath the table, and waited for the feast to finish, barely listening to Dumbledore’s speech.

The Slytherin first years followed a Prefect to the Common Room. Harry anxiously tried to memorise the twisting route, knowing that he wouldn’t have any help again: with the way most the older Slytherins were staring at him in disgust and suspicion and Malfoy was insulting him nastily with his little clique, Harry doubted that he was going to find someone willing to give him directions.

When they were shown their dorm room, he got the last free bed, in the darkest corner of the room, and Malfoy smirked smugly at him. They quickly trooped back down to the Common Room, where the black haired man, who presented himself as Severus Snape, their Head of House, gave a quick speech on how they were expected to behave. He stressed the fact that everyone should have a proper attire and his gaze lingered on Harry’s second-hand trainers, worn and two sizes too big. Harry flushed in shame at the resounding sniggers, and almost had a panic attack when Snape said that everyone must follow Wizarding etiquette properly. Harry had absolutely no idea what kind of manners where expected from a Wizard, having been raised by Muggles, and no one thought to offer any free information on the topic.

* * *

Harry’s first weeks passed in a haze. Though he was mostly ignored inside his House -except by Malfoy and his goons, who never missed a chance to taunt him- in the corridors Harry was constantly pranked and barraged by hexes and jinxes by members of the other three Houses, especially Gryffindors, who for some obscure reason felt slighted that Harry had become a snake.

Fifth year Slytherin prefect Marcus Flint sometimes rid Harry of the pranks and jinxes with a flick of his wand, but mostly Harry was left to fend for himself, and had to trudge to the Infirmary to get himself fixed by a disapproving Madam Pomfrey. Finally, after two weeks of Harry coming to see her practically everyday, the Matron snapped: “Potter! That’s enough! If you’re going to come here to waste my time every single day, you should fix yourself alone!”

Harry stared at the nurse wide-eyed, who was muttering about ‘arrogant pranksters’, feeling crushed. The next day, when a Ravenclaw third year made him sprout green whiskers, Harry sequestered himself in the library and, after an hour of careful search, finally found the counter curse and was able to flee whisker-free from the glaring librarian.

As for the rest of the faculty, Harry wasn’t very well seen: his grades were average, and Snape’s detentions and the amount of pranks he was involved in resulted in lots of time spent in the library to fix them, so his homework was mostly rushed and almost illegible, not being used to writing with a quill.

During Harry’s first Transfiguration class, McGonagall had instructed them to turn their matches into needles, and Harry’s had only managed to make his only look a bit silvery, he had seen the woman’s eyes narrow in disappointment: clearly, he wasn’t as good in the subject as his father. Not that he wished to be like his father in any way: between the Dursleys’ stories of his drunkard father and Snape’s snide comments on the subject during his numerous detentions with the man (usually caused by something as stupid as ‘breathing too loudly’), Harry had absolutely no desire to be similar to his father. Hagrid refused to see him now, so his kind words on his parents were quickly forgotten.

Despite being the subject of the hatred of practically the whole school, the most hurtful thing that happened to Harry was Hagrid’s distance. Since he had been sorted into Slytherin, the man had been avoiding him, and the only time that Harry went to his hut for tea, an awkward silence hung between them. Eventually, Harry resigned himself to the loss of Hagrid’s friendship, and tried to think about the Hogwarts experience in a positive light: the subjects were much more interesting than those in his Muggle school, and he could eat as much as he liked. True, there were more bullies here than at home, but after a while, when he became used to the castle, Harry found out that it was much easier to loose pursuers here in the twisting passages than in the Muggle world.

Unfortunately, Harry’s perception of the old castle started shifting once again on Halloween night. Harry had opted to skip the Halloween Feast, planning to use his parents’ murder as an excuse, but in fact not feeling in the mood to watch everyone chat and laugh with their friends while they stuffed themselves with treats. He was reading a book in the Common Room, when suddenly the whole of Slytherin House came back from the Feast together, everyone talking animatedly and with furious expressions. Surprised, Harry tentatively asked a third year girl what at happened, and he was soon surrounded by a gaggle of people, everyone trying to tell him their version of the story, while Harry listened in horror as they recounted how Quirrell had shouted that there was a troll in the dungeons, and Dumbledore had made the whole House go there immediately after.

Harry’s expressive and panicked facial expressions weren’t mocked for once, but he never noticed: Harry went through his nightly routine in a daze and then he laid in bed awake for hours, his thoughts frightened and jumbled. He had believed, naively he now knew, that Hogwarts was safe. Hagrid had actually said that Hogwarts was practically as safe as Gringotts! And yet, a troll had somehow managed to make its way into the school. And not only that: Dumbledore had told everyone to head back to their dormitories. Surely the Headmaster knew that the Slytherin Common Room was in the dungeons, where the troll had last been sighted? And now, Harry was only eleven, but he personally thought that it would have been more prudent to lock all the students in the Great Hall until the threat had been dealt with. Possibly with some Professors standing guard at the doors. Instead, the feast had been needlessly interrupted and all the students were sent in four different directions without adult supervision.

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, Harry had mostly calmed down, almost convincing himself that his imagination had made all the drama appear bigger than reality. His delusions though were crushed when he heard a gaggle of Ravenclaws whisper that Hermione Granger (the Gryffindor girl Harry had privately dubbed ‘the know-it-all bully’) had been maimed by the troll and was now at St. Mungo’s, the Wizarding hospital, in intensive care. Harry simply couldn’t believe that the annoying girl who had stalked him in the library, forcing her unwanted company on him, had been hurt. They had never been friends because, yes, Harry wanted a friend, but he wasn’t _that_ desperate to stand for her condescending attitude. And he really didn’t want the rest of the Slytherins to ostracise him even more for befriending a Mudblood who loudly proclaimed that Muggles were way better than Wizards. Because really, in Harry’s experience, they weren’t.

Still, to think that a girl that had nagged him for hours the day before was maimed… well, in one version of the story. The other one said that she had been clobbered half to death. It was terrifying, and when Dumbledore actually confirmed the rumours at dinner, Harry had to make a run to the nearest toilet and empty his stomach in a show of nerves.

* * *

Granger in the end never did come back to Hogwarts, and she was soon forgotten by the whole school, Harry included. Unfortunately, Hogwarts hadn’t finished terrorising her young charges: Snape had given Harry yet another detention for some imagined reason, and he, Malfoy and Weasley were to go in the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid, at _night,_ to search for something which _killed unicorns._ Now, Harry wasn’t really a coward, but his nerves where really frayed, because from the time he had learned about magic he hadn’t yet seen anything positive about it, and he had never stepped in a forest in his whole life. So, being stranded in an unknown environment at night, with only Malfoy and a dog (thankfully not similar to Marge’s bulldogs, which Harry held an unhealthy amount of fear for but, you know, still a _dog_ ) was one of the most terrorising experiences ever.

And when you count in being attacked by a spectre and then saved by a centaur of all things, not even the irascible centaur Bane had a snappy retort for the clearly panicked and terrorised young child.


End file.
